


closure

by writingtheworks



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers - Freeform, F/M, Marvel Universe, endgame spoilers, endgame spoilers?, fucking sad bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 13:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18621214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingtheworks/pseuds/writingtheworks
Summary: After their plan retrieve the space stone fails, Steve and Tony travel to the 1970s in order to retrieve the tesseract at SHIELD headquarters. While Tony gets the tesseract, Steve must retrieve (with the help of a photostatic veil) another set of Pym Particles for their return home… but must cut through a 5-year anniversary SHIELD party to get to it, and the dancefloor at its center.Needless to say, Steve finds closure.





	closure

**Author's Note:**

> I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that Tony had the best character arc in the MCU. Steve, however, did not, and I felt that it would be better done if he gets closure with Peggy... just as Thor did with Frigga, and Tony did with Howard. Here's my shot at that (after a lot of crying).
> 
> I reccomend you listen to this song as you read: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdkQXOyTml4.

They didn’t have much time left. Of that, Steve was certain, but he was also certain of something else: Tony would get them through it. He’d gotten them here. He’d gotten them the answer, as he always had. So maybe Steve was scared—they all were. But he had Tony, and that was a little more than comforting.

Camp Lehigh’s air was dry and hard in the upper parts of Steve’s throat, the grating flavor of phantom asthma lingering somewhere beneath as he crossed the path to the barracks. As before, the ammunition bunker in the center of the base stuck out; Rogers watched the heat signatures of two agents disappear beneath the depths of the earth.

He had little time to collect himself before the new environment swallowed him whole. Pym’s lab, according to the chatter around him and Tony’s own assumptions, was tucked into the very end of the western wing of _SHIELD_. Steve took two steps outside the elevator and knew he was doomed.

After politely nodding to a lady at the desk and whizzing past several cart-fulls of files, Steve slipped through a maintenance door and made a mental plan to avoid entering the bullpen. But that was apparently unnecessary; after scooping up a prototype for a photostatic veil, Steve peered through a set of blinds and found the space of desks almost entirely empty.

Voices ahead startled him to work against a pile of folders.

“Can’t believe it’s been five years,” said Howard Stark, shaking his head in disbelief. He glances at his company, “Why aren’t you down in the announcement chamber for the celebration? You seem like you’re the kind of guy who enjoys those.”

Tony eyed Steve with something caught between contentment and utter panic, and ducked underneath his sunglasses to answer his father. “Oh, um. Lots of paperwork to do… You know how hard the director works us.”

“Ha! Isn’t that right, now. I’d like to see you say that to her face.” Howard’s voice drifted toward the exit, Tony’s an uncertain mumble tiptoeing in his tracks.

Steve’s back unwound the moment the doors shut, and with their closing, he jogged down the length of the storage hall to connect with the door at the other end. If they were in 1970, then the celebration Howard was talking about was probably the fifth anniversary of SHIELD’s founding. Whether he should use the party for cover would take too long to debate. Following his gut, Steve turned the knob and passed through a wall of sound.

Despite being in the workplace, the party was in full swing. People were dancing in circles and chattering loudly over the Stark-funded buffet, covering the crowd in a fine layer of gossamer accomplishment. Pym was making a toast at a table across the way. His office was sure to be empty, then, and Steve gained the brilliant idea to cut across the dancefloor to get there.

He should have never trusted his gut.

Why this song was chosen next was beyond Steve, but the first few notes hit him in slow motion, harder and deadlier than anything Rogers had been hit with before. Harry James and Kitty Kallen’s recording of _It’s Been a Long, Long Time_ fell through Steve at the same moment the dancers switched partners.

“ _Peggy_ ,” Steve muttered in surprise.

His partner recovered from the nostalgia of the music much faster than he, startled by the sound of her name, and fell into step with him as her stern gaze met the photostatic veil’s. “Is that how you always refer to your superior officer?”

The heart in his throat kept him from replying, and so Steve bowed his head even if the viel kept her from recognizing him. Her grip was loose but her steps were certain. It was Peggy, stern and proud and beautiful as ever, and suddenly Steve was five feet tall again.

“Forgive me, ma’am,” startled Steve, “I-I understand… uh, how annoying it must be to not be taken seriously sometimes, for um… for your position. I used to be real frail as a kid and I’d get beat up for it, all the time, and… uh—”

Steve scrambled for a recovery, pierced clean through by something in her eyes. “Sorry. I’m new to the facility, and hadn’t pictured meeting… a, you know. A legend like you.”

White-hot emotion turned his insides to ash, filtered through the soft touch of Peggy’s hand and the smell of her perfume, and Steve felt the longing burying him six feet under.

When time travel had first been brought into the equation… every eye had fallen to him beneath each brim. Natasha had held his shoulder, repeated back the plan, and figured out for herself what she imagined Steve would do. And he wanted… a lot of things. After everything was over, after they avenged the earth and won, a part of him had this silly little idea to come back.

For her.

“A legend?” Chuckled Peggy, nodding to herself. “And why do you say that?”

“My dad,” Steve breathes, forcing past the barricade in his throat, “was, uh, in the war. He worked with you and Cap real briefly. Used to tell me stories about you as a kid.”

It wasn’t… bad. After waking up, Steve was in a permanent state of suspension, planted with his feet in the dirt as everything and everyone around him went ahead. His every thought was devoted to ideas such as these. All of the time he had lost, every dream he had ever had beyond the military, each moment he’d yearned for when it had all happened without him.

Couldn’t he fix that? Finally, after years of waiting, abandoned a century later by time’s cruel hands… could he use this chance? Did he finally earn his peace?

Peggy stared at him for a long breath, his visage a canvas for her painting, and dissolved into similar thoughts as the music played on. Steve cautiously asked, “And, um. Steve. Captain America. What was he like?”

She describes him with love in her eyes. The ache in his chest grows greater and greater by the minute, because they’re _dancing_ . They finally got their dance and it’s _here_. Peggy doesn't even know who he is, why he’s here, or what he’s thinking… but they’re dancing.

After, Steve comments mournfully. “You seem like you really loved him.”

Peggy laughs. It’s bright and bittersweet. “Of course I did. But… this is a professional setting, and a joyful occasion. We shouldn’t be discussing such sad things.”

“Yes. Maybe.” Steve said. He almost chokes on yearning and loss alike, “But… if you could go back. Have a life with him. Would you?”

Something in her expression shifts, a drop of wine into water, and the feeling melts up and down her form. Steve shouldn’t have done this. Shouldn’t have risked it. Peggy is smart, much smarter than anyone has ever given her credit for, and Steve has always been an idiot around her.

The war was nearly over. Couldn’t he come home?

She tilts her head. “I would want to see him again. Say a proper goodbye. But… Steve is my past. I loved him, more than… Yes. But to have a life with him would take away all that I have now—the family and job that I love, the life that I adore.”

He could be happy. _They_ could be happy—

But Peggy was right. If Steve came back to her… he would be leaving his present life behind for something that was only the way it was once. Worse, he would be taking Peggy’s life from her too. The husband that wasn’t Steve. The grandchildren that weren’t his either. The life and peace and innocence that had moved on without him, when Steve needed to be moving on, too.

Steve’s lips pulled together, his body pulled into hers, swaying to the music that once belonged to them. Tears that had been in his eyes from the moment they touched hands fell into her hair. Steve clung to Peggy for a final moment more, a moment fate had gifted out of remorse, and he stepped away.

“It was nice meeting you, director,” Steve tells her—it’s time to switch dance partners. “I hope I didn’t step on your toes.”

Peggy halts. But when she turns around to search for him, he’s faded into the crowd, and left to wonder with her hand on her heart and her heart in her throat, if they finally gained the closure they’d always needed.

If they finally had that dance, and Steve had most definitely been late.


End file.
